Tag Archive for 'smoking'

Enjoy Bacon? Of Course You Do!

Here’s why. You didn’t have a chance.

The original Father of Spin, Edward Bernays took on the Beech-Nut Packing Company as a client in order to salvage their tanking bacon sales as American switched their eating preferences to breakfast cereal, toast, and juice. Together with fellow publicist Ivy Lee he’s credited with founding the profession we know today as public relations, although looking back some might question the morality of his triumphs.

Cue Homer Simpson.

Bernays was a nephew of Sigmund Freud, and his remarkable marketing insight allowed him to successfully pitch smoking cigarettes to American women as patriotic. At the height of the Cold War his campaign on behalf of the United Fruit Company’s Chiquita banana brand led to the overthrow of the democratically elected Guatemalan government. No surprise, then, that when he focused then new marketing techniques on the task for his client he successfully switched on the bacon for breakfast gene that had begun to dim.